


A Journey to Go

by cosmic_llin



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Sickfic, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 10:05:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15117113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/pseuds/cosmic_llin
Summary: Ada and Hecate find themselves trapped when a transference spell goes wrong.Written for Week Five of the Hackle Summer Trope Challenge.





	A Journey to Go

Ada knew instantly what must have happened.

Hecate had looked paler than usual when they awoke that morning. Her voice had croaked and she’d got up and dressed as though she was wading through sand, but she’d denied that anything was wrong until Ada flat-out asked at breakfast whether she had a cold.

‘I’ll take the precaution of a spell against infection,’ Hecate had promised. ‘So there’s no chance of the girls catching it in class.’

‘Never mind class!’ Ada had said. ‘You should be back in bed!’

But Hecate had responded with a deep frown, and Ada had known that there would be no persuading her to take a day off, not while she was still on her feet.

And now they were stuck in Vanishment.

It was lunchtime. Hecate had been about to transfer them both across the school to attend to some small matter that needed attending to before afternoon lessons began. But she’d sneezed mid-spell, and here they were.

It had happened plenty of times before. A vanishing spell was very close in technique to a transference spell, and a distracted witch could easily slip and substitute one for the other. Not many things more distracting than a sneeze at the very moment of casting. The only hitch was that there was no known way for a witch to get herself  _ out _ of Vanishment, but that wasn’t an insurmountable problem. Someone would realise what had happened and fetch them soon enough.

‘Oh dear…’ Ada said when they arrived, Hecate still sneezing at her side.

When the sneezing fit was over, her eyes opened and then widened in horror.

‘Oh, Ada!’ she said hoarsely. ‘This is… of all the… I don’t...’

‘It’s not the end of the world,’ said Ada, taking Hecate’s hand and squeezing it. It felt clammy.

‘It’s inexcusable,’ said Hecate crossly. ‘To have so little control over my magic... I’m sorry, Ada.’

‘Dearest, you’re exhausted, and you’re ill,’ said Ada. ‘You’ve barely had a moment’s rest in weeks, and on top of teaching while you’re not well, you’re pouring what little energy you have left into an anti-infection spell. It’s no wonder you stumbled. These things happen, to everyone.’

‘Not to me,’ said Hecate, her lip wobbling.

Ada saw her expression and decided that a few moments to compose herself and accept the situation would do better than anything Ada could offer right now. Instead she looked around them for something to sit down on while they waited for rescue.

She had only actually been inside Vanishment a handful of times, and she’d always found it fascinating. It was like a shadow of the castle in shades of grey, the only colour coming from the vanished objects, which stayed in the counterpart to the real location where they had been vanished until they were called back to the real world. Noises were muffled here, and smells were muted. And for some reason there were always mice around. Ada supposed a pair of them must have been vanished at some point and founded a great Vanished Mouse Empire.

She looked around the shadow of the corridor for a moment, and then remembered something.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I vanished one of the sofas from the staff room the other day to make room for Miss Bat’s delivery of new chanting books. We can at least be comfortable while we’re here.’

Hecate, muttering under her breath, allowed herself to be led to the staff room, where the sofa sat in its usual position, surrounded by vanished teaching detritus - quills and pens, scrap paper, a broken music stand, and a sports magazine that Ada was almost certain Dimity had been covertly reading during their last staff meeting.

‘Now, let’s sit down and get comfy,’ said Ada.

Hecate perched on the edge of the sofa, her mouth closed in a straight line.

‘How are you feeling, really?’ Ada asked. ‘Now that it’s just the two of us?’

Hecate sighed. ‘Like death warmed up,’ she admitted, and once she had let the words out her whole body slumped, as though she had abruptly run out of energy to keep pretending.

‘Oh, Hecate…’ Ada extended an arm and Hecate shuffled beneath it, letting Ada draw her close. She tucked her feet up on the sofa and leaned her head on Ada’s shoulder. Ada leaned down and kissed the top of her head.

‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘I’m officially banning you from teaching for at least three days. You need some rest.’

‘Three days? That’s ridiculous. I’ll be fine by tomorrow.’

‘Who’s the headmistress here, you or me?’

‘You are.’

‘And don’t you forget it. If I say three days, I mean three days.’

‘Yes, Headmistress,’ said Hecate meekly.

‘That’s more like it,’ said Ada.

‘And I’m sorry again. About this.’

Ada tutted. ‘Hecate, you’re the best witch for miles around, but you’re not infallible. And I wouldn’t want you to be.’

‘You wouldn’t?’

‘It would make me look terrible in comparison.’

‘Nonsense.’

Ada felt Hecate’s smile.

‘I’ve always wondered, about Vanishment,’ she said conversationally, stroking Hecate’s arm.

‘What about it?’

‘Well, one assumes that it’s the same everywhere, but how far does it go? Is it all connected? How far could we walk in Vanishment before it got difficult for someone to summon us back to our original location?’

‘Good question,’ said Hecate, but she didn’t jump in with any theories.

‘And how exactly is it connected to our world?’ Ada continued. ‘I know there have been studies, but from what I’ve seen nobody’s yet come up with a broadly accepted theory. And how long has it been there? Did Vanishment exist before witches learned to vanish? Or did it spring to life when the first vanishing spell took place? If nothing has been vanished in a location, does it  _ have  _ a Vanishment yet?’

‘Hmmmm,’ said Hecate.

Ada shifted position slightly so that Hecate could rest more easily against her. Hecate’s arm snaked around Ada’s waist.

‘And if there  _ was _ no Vanishment in a particular place, where would the line be between it and the next pocket?’ Ada said. ‘And how would we ever find out whether there was something there without vanishing something or someone and thereby bringing it into existence? It’s a conundrum. I’m not surprised that spell scientists have been working on it for all this time without coming to any firm conclusions. In fact, do you know, I’m going to suggest that Mr Rowan-Webb add this to his curriculum. I’m sure some of the students could design some very creative experiments on the topic.’

The only sound Hecate made was a gentle snore. Ada looked fondly down at her, summoned Dimity’s magazine to read, and hoped that they wouldn’t be found at least for a little while.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from this rhyme about sneezing: http://www.devilles.co.uk/word21.htm


End file.
